A "friend-of-the-court" brief filed with a federal district court on behalf of more than 25 prominent health policy and child health experts says Department of Health and Human Services changes to the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) "have no basis in evidence or the law."
States are pursuing health system improvements across the full spectrum of their authority, including health care purchasing, provider regulation, performance data reporting, integration of public health with health care approaches, and improving the availability and affordability of health insurance.
Some 25% of people in the United States who lack health coverage are eligible for public insurance programs but are not enrolled due to barriers that make it difficult for them to do so.
Medicaid cuts in Oregon were followed by increases in both hospital emergency department (ED) use and hospitalization of the uninsured. A study published online April 17, 2008, in the Annals of Emergency Medicine says federal legislation facilitating similar Medicaid changes in other states may lead to higher ED use and hospitalizations elsewhere.
Almost all states are actively engaged in e-health strategies to facilitate use of information technology to make the health care system more efficient and provide greater value and higher quality.
Pennsylvania has become the first state in the nation to receive the federal government's permission to spend federal Medicaid dollars on services that enable autistic adults to live more independently.
For the first time, newly proposed guidance puts a number and a cost to the respirators needed to protect health care workers during an influenza pandemic: 480 respirators at a cost of about $240 to protect a single employee, or a single reusable elastomeric respirator with three filters at a cost of $40 per employee.
If you could give health care workers the ideal respirator, what would it look like? For the first time, an interagency task force is considering that question in a project they hope will result in a more effective, less cumbersome respirator perhaps one that doesn't require fit-testing.